Truro arts backer Guy Strauss dies

NORTH TRURO — Guy Strauss, the founding artistic director of Payomet Performing Arts Center, died Tuesday morning of cancer, his family confirmed Wednesday.

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By MARY ANN BRAGG

capecodtimes.com

By MARY ANN BRAGG

Posted Feb. 20, 2014 at 2:00 AM

By MARY ANN BRAGG
Posted Feb. 20, 2014 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

NORTH TRURO — Guy Strauss, the founding artistic director of Payomet Performing Arts Center, died Tuesday morning of cancer, his family confirmed Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, at the end, it was very quick," said his wife, Margaret Stewart. Strauss, 83, died at his home in North Truro.

A professional stage and film actor with a late-blooming career, Strauss founded the arts center in 1998 in a tent off Route 6. He was 68 at the time.

The tent was pitched near a gravel pit, and about 80 feet from the breakdown lane, said stand-up comic Jimmy Tingle on Wednesday. "We called it the big top. I would joke, 'After my show, there'll be some lions and tigers coming out.'"

More seriously, Tingle said that Strauss offered the kind of support, generosity and drive that performers rarely find.

"He really loved comedy, and what I was doing," Tingle said. "I just really enjoyed him and feel privileged to have known him and worked with him."

In 2006, Strauss moved the Payomet to its current home at the Highlands Center in North Truro, in the Cape Cod National Seashore. During his 10-year tenure, the center produced 600 shows, including regional and world premiere theater, with both Equity and Cape actors, along with comedy, concerts, children's programs and historical presentations in keeping with Seashore activities.

And what Strauss began continues today, said Payomet managing artistic director Kevin Rice, who took over leadership in 2008. About 20,000 people attend the center's events each summer, he said.

It requires a tremendous amount of energy to run a nonprofit performance center, especially one with the physical requirements of setting up a tent, Rice said.

"He was a real powerhouse," he said about Strauss.

Strauss was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists for many years, according to Marc Strauss, his son.

He had roles in the films such as "Mystic River," "True Lies," "Amistad" and "The Crucible," and in television shows including "Brotherhood," "St. Elsewhere" and "Spenser: For Hire."

He performed in the plays "A Life in the Theatre," "The Boys Next Door" and "True West." Marc Strauss said his father was particularly proud of performing locally with actress Beverly Bentley in A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters" and producing and acting in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," his one-man show of the works of writer Raymond Carver.

Strauss toured and performed in Russia as well, and was a host and producer for the "Theatre of the Air" radio program in Provincetown on WOMR.

On Wednesday, Bentley recalled that she'd met Strauss at a cocktail party at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

They performed "Love Letters" as a benefit for WOMR as recently as 2012 and had done other plays together in Truro, Provincetown and elsewhere.

"We enjoyed many years of working together, and I will miss him terribly," Bentley said from New York.

Strauss was born in France. He and his brother were brought to the United States by their mother after their father died in World War I, according to Marc Strauss. He had two sons from a previous marriage: Marc and Daniel, who died in 1991.

"If you knew him — and he knew everybody — what he was most proud of was the founding of Payomet, and he was also very proud of starting his acting career when he was 50," his wife said.

Strauss came from Boston to live full time in Truro in the winter of 1992-1993, after Daniel died, she said.

He had acted in high school and a few years beyond but had taken a job in the travel industry once he married and needed a real job, she said.

Around the age of 50, he decided to pursue acting — his true love — and was always very proud to be a member of the actors unions.

"He had a very strong will. He would call around to get work," Stewart said.

"He was proud of that, and of the theater and his children, and he loved children in general. He was a very warm person and very generous."